Anne Bradstreet

Anne Bradstreet

Anne Bradstreet was a woman in conflict. She was a Puritan wife and a poet. There is a conflict between Puritan theology and her own personal feelings on life. Many of her poems reveal her eternal conflict regarding her emotions and the beliefs of her religion. The two often stood in direct opposition to each other. Her Puritan faith demanded that she seek salvation and the promises of Heaven. However, Bradstreet felt more strongly about her life on Earth. She was very. She was very attached to her family and community. Bradstreet loved her life and the Earth.

There are several poems of Bradstreet that demonstrate this conflict. There is “Upon the Burning of Our House July 10th, 1666” and the ones written on the deaths of her grandchildren. These are both examples of her feelings about life on Earth and her religious beliefs.

In the critical essay of Robert D. Richardson Jr., he examines the poem “Upon the Burning of Our House” from a conventional Puritan point of view, “an exercise in finding the hand of God behind every apparent disaster. Yet, the poem moves back and forth from the human level to the divine, and it is not impossible to argue that the human level – fear of fire, the sense of loss is what genuinely moves the poet, while her submission to the will of God is somewhat forced acknowledgment of an arrangement that is not really satisfactory.”(105)

And when I could no longer look,

I blest his Name that gone and took,

That layd my goods now in the dust:

Yea so it was, and twas just.

It was his own: It was not mine;

Far be it that I should repine. (311)

These lines of submission are clipped and measured, grimly singsong: they sound forced when placed alongside the following lines which emphasize personal loss. (Richardson 105)Here stood that Trunk, and there that chest

There lay that store I counted best:

My pleasant things in ashes lye.

Anne uses the proper application, interpreting the event as a warning, and as an injunction to look toward the “house on high erect.” But the vacillation in the poem suggests that the sense of loss outweighs, at least at times, the potential comfort promised by Puritan theology. (Richardson 106)

In the critical essay by Ann Standford, “Anne Bradstreet Dogmatist and Rebel,” she tells us that Anne Bradstreet “comforts herself with good Pur...

... middle of paper ...

... she used her poetry. She was able to do this in a subtle way. Yet she expressed her feelings and her questioning about Puritan theology. Were her conflicts ever fully quieted within her? There is some evidence that towards the end of her life she was able to accept her fate.

Anne Bradstreet died on September 16, 1672 at the age of sixty. She was very ill in the last months of her life. Her works reflect the tension and conflict of a woman struggling for artistic expression. She was troubled by religious doubts throughout her life yet managed to be a successful mother and wife. Her belief in the beauty of this world helped her maintain a belief in a heaven.

Bibliography:

Martin,Wendy. An American Triptych. Chapel Hill: University of North

Carolina Press, 1984.

Richardson Jr., Robert D. “The Puritan Poetry of Anne Bradstreet” Critical

Essays on Anne Bradstreet. Ed Pattie Cowell and Ann Stanford.

Boston: Hall 1983. 101 – 115.

Stanford, Ann. “Anne Bradstreet Dogmatist and Rebel” Critical Essays on Anne

Bradstreet. Ed Pattie Cowell and Ann Stanford. Boston: Hall 1983.

76 – 88.